Viola Liuzzo: The Mother Who Drove Into History
There’s a story in The History of Us that speaks straight to the soul. It’s a story not just about courage, but about conviction. It’s the story of Viola Liuzzo, a white mother from Detroit who gave her life for Black freedom during the Civil Rights Movement.
Viola wasn’t famous. She wasn’t rich. She wasn’t a politician or a preacher. She was a mother of five who watched the news one night in 1965 and couldn’t stay quiet anymore. She saw the brutality on the Edmund Pettus Bridge during the Selma to Montgomery March, where peaceful protesters were beaten and tear-gassed for demanding the right to vote. Something inside her broke.
She looked at her children, then looked at the television, and said, “This is wrong. Somebody has to go down there.”
So she did.
Viola packed her car, left her home, and drove to Alabama to volunteer with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. She used her car to transport marchers, deliver supplies, and drive exhausted activists to safety after the marches. She was one of the few white women who joined the movement openly and fearlessly. But that bravery made her a target.
On the night of March 25, 1965, after the historic Selma to Montgomery march had ended, Viola was driving along Highway 80 with a young Black activist named Leroy Moton when a car filled with Ku Klux Klan members began to follow them. The Klansmen pulled alongside her car and opened fire. Viola was killed instantly. She was only 39 years old.
Her death shocked the nation. The FBI investigated, and for a moment, America had to look in the mirror. Viola Liuzzo had crossed the color line not with words, but with action. And for that, she paid with her life.
But her story didn’t end there. Her sacrifice became a spark that lit conversations across the country about allyship, sacrifice, and what it truly means to stand for justice. She proved that the fight for equality isn’t just a Black issue. It’s a human one.
When I wrote about Viola in The History of Us, I didn’t just see a story about race. I saw a story about humanity and what happens when someone decides that silence is no longer an option. Viola’s courage challenges all of us to ask, What am I willing to do when I see injustice?
Her chapter is one of the most powerful reminders that allyship is action. It’s not about sympathy; it’s about standing shoulder to shoulder with those who are suffering. It’s about using whatever you have, your voice, your time, or your courage, to make a difference.
Viola Liuzzo’s story teaches us that bravery doesn’t always come from the people we expect. Sometimes it comes from a mother who’s simply had enough.
She may have died on an Alabama highway, but her spirit still drives on. It lives in every person who refuses to look away, in every ally who chooses to stand up, and in every soul who believes that love is stronger than hate.
Her story is one of many inside The History of Us, a collection of the hidden and powerful stories that shaped America’s past and our moral conscience. These are the stories we were never meant to forget.
You can read Viola’s full story, along with fourteen others, inside The History of Us. Each chapter uncovers a different truth, stories of strength, resilience, and unity that remind us who we are and what we stand for.
Kenneth Young
Author, Mentor, Poet, Builder of Futures
Founder of THOU Books, where fathers teach history and families learn together.